This report describes The Royal Shakespeare Company’s efforts to change the way it is organised using the guiding principle of ‘ensemble’. 

Key findings:

• The principle of ‘ensemble’ has various benefits when applied as an organisational practice.
• Organisational development, guided by ensemble principles, has helped the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to achieve artistic success, improved financial performance and morale, and made operations and productions more efficient.
• The lessons learned in the RSC’s work are that: emotions are important – acknowledge them; leaders are at the heart of a network, not at the top of a pyramid; and conceptual simplicity is the best response to organisational and contextual complexity.

For the past three years The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has been working to transfer their "ensemble" way of working out of their acting company and into the rest of the organisation. The approach takes a more collaborative and democratic ways of managing the company.

Nesta's role in this project has been to highlight its innovation nature and to identify a transferable model that can be adopted by other organisations. Read more about our work with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The project has been closely followed by the think tank DEMOS who have produced a report of the key activities and findings.

Authors:

Robert Hewison, John Holden, Samuel Jones - DEMOS